28 Artists Use This

Thom Yorke can be seen using the Elektron Machinedrum SPS-1 in this video of his performance at Big Chill Festival in 2010, during the song "The Gloaming." Right at the start of the video, he looks to be messing with the Machinedrum, which is situated on the right side of the piano.

"For me, Elektron produces the most futuristic machines. The Machinedrum is my favourite by far! It's so easy and fun to program amazing sounds and patterns that just sound different to all the generic electro house and dubstep beats that I really can’t stand. For example, I love when the kick drum changes within the track, not the sound, more the frequencies or the filter."

Incredibly lush sound. Digital but warm, deep and very open ended. The Machinedrum has bass, it really delivers. I've made some of the lushest kick drums on it; they really cut through a rig in a live situation. The physical modelling in the Machinedrum is really odd and unique I think. Very useable, way better than the standard set you hear everywhere. I’m also having a lot of fun with the RAM machines in the Machinedrum UserWave. Done tons of stuff with them and I still see loads of potential for new applications. The Machinedrum is also the tightest sequencer we've got in here.

In this [promotional article](http://www.elektron.se/talk/369) from Elektron's official site, Anthony describes why he loves the Elektron Machinedrum - "Rhythm is very important to my music but different songs require different approaches. Some songs sound better with real drums only, other ones need electronic sounds only and sometimes a combination of the Machinedrum and a real drummer is the best option. I usually play the Machinedrum in real time, tapping the trig keys, and then sequence sounds on top of that rhythm. The EFM machines are my favorites. They have such a clear sound."

"When I did the toms, I used the Machinedrum, one of my favorite piece of gear at the moment, and the drums sound like this... and I just used here... you see the buttons? These are the three sounds, and I just tuned them in a certain way so they fit to the bass and they fit together like a melody... and the good thing is you can really go here and tune the single drums... and make them sound like a chord..." (1:41)

At 25:18 into the video "Baauer: Searching For Sound," he can be seen playing the Elektron Machinedrum SPS-1 MKII drum machine, which sits in his studio gear setup. It can be seen again at 25:22 and a few more times after that.

The Elektron Machinedrum SPS-1UW MKII is visible throughout this video in which Mathew Jonson highlights his live performance setup.
At 4:20, Jonson talks about the Electron Machinedrum, saying"I've got a drum kit loaded up on here. It's prewritten, it's the same one for every set. It's set up and leveled in way so that when I'm using it with the separate outputs, it's all constant. It allows me to have the freedom... it gives me a piece of mind. ...it allows me to take chances and push the mix out."

"The Elektron machines are really special. They take old ideas from the heritage pieces, but they are more forward-thinking. One of my favorite pieces, and it’s actually not in the studio at the moment, is still my Machinedrum. The Elektron pieces are really unique because they are multi-purpose pieces. Like the Analog Four, or Keys—they can do a lot of CV and audio processing, which is quite awesome, but I think the Machindrum still has a huge bit of magic, especially with the live re-sampling."

Per the Elektron website and an [exclusive interview](http://www.elektron.se/talk/118) with Zombie Nation who says, "I really like working with samples using the Machinedrum Userwave. There's no other instrument capable of doing what it can do. In the beginning I was skeptical about the amount of sample memory available in the UW, but the creative possibilities are so vast. With those 48 samples you can make half an album."

6 Reviews

Thanks Elektron, for converting my generic desire for a simple drum machine, into an addiction to the drum monster users call: the Machinedrum. The heart of this beast is in the sequencer. Parameter lock any parameter, on any step, and the result is an extremely fluid and and creative drum machine. Just try to take a guess at how many onboard LFOs in this machine... 16 per synthesis engine! Sweet Jesus, what a load of intricate customizations in a single machine. On top of that, there are effects engines, external control, internal triggering, and the list just goes on. Wanna spice things up? Send an LFO out to control anything you can plug your cables into. The Machinedrum is sure to put hair on your chest and increase your shoe size, folks, you'll see not many beat this machine.

That's a great review. What style of music do you make with it? I definitely wanna get a hardware drum machine at some point, you make a good case for this one. I wonder how it compares with the Roland TR-8 though...

Thanks man. Electro pop is what I like to write, but Machinedrum is the ultimate tool for helping users to create those tough-to-imagine-at-first kind of beats. Dangerous IDM sounds, feedback noise generation, and then everything traditional. I would consider the Machinedrum over any other because it's that one instrument that I have that contains all of its competitors inside and more. The Roland TR sounds can be found in seconds, but machine drum allows you to do much more. Here's a fun video for you, this guy is great at exploring the depth of the Machinedrum: http://youtu.be/LtxX0VEpMSI

Diffrent synthesis types, switchable for all 16 channels + 16 midi channels which can send 3 notes each at a time. I love this machine. One thing I noticed ( as I own the Analog Rytm too) is, that you need some time to tweak the sounds to get them sounding FAT. The opposite to the Analog Rytm where you get instant FAT sounds. But the Machinedrum is a tool I wouldn't want to miss in my productions.

I owned this for about 10 years. It was amazing, then i bought a Digitakt to essentially replace it as my central controller machine. I decided that i didn’t have time to synthesise my own drum sounds, preferring to work with samples, though I have also added the MFB Tanzbar 2 to my set up (i swapped the Machinedrum for the Tanzbar 2). The Machinedrum also has some interesting additional controlling features (CTRL ALL etc) which i never got my head around but are supposedly very powerful tools for experimenting.